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Impress your friends with five fast facts about artist Laure Tixier (b. 1972). Tixier’s Plaid Houses (Maquettes) (2005–11), currently on view in NMWA’s collection galleries, explore a range of architectural styles in a rainbow of colors, referencing the variety, beauty, and complexities of the built environment.

1. Earliest Green Architecture

White Hut and Brown Usha Hut recall modest, vernacular architecture from around the world. Historically, huts were constructed of natural materials like animal skin, wool, grass, earth, and wood. Yurts or gers, a type of portable hut, have been common dwellings for nomadic Central Asians for centuries.

Orange Breton House is a nod to chaumières (thatched cottages) in Brittany, France’s northwest coastal region. Characteristics of these traditional dwellings include walls of local stone like granite, schist, or sandstone; steep gabled roofs covered with dry vegetation; and siting facing south to make the most of daily sunlight.

3. Streamlined Structure

Blue Art Deco House celebrates the first truly international architectural movement. Born in Europe in the early 20th century and introduced worldwide at the 1925 Paris International Exhibition, Art Deco is a simple, symmetrical style that boasts clean lines and the innovative use of manufactured materials like plastic and concrete.

4. Disjointed Diva

Tixier’s red asymmetrical house reflects Deconstructivism, a postmodern architectural style that emerged in the 1980s. It often incorporates organic shapes, acute and obtuse angles, and irregular surface areas to impart a sense of chaos. Practitioners include Zaha Hadid (1950–2016), the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2004).

A young NMWA visitor experiences Laure Tixier’s Plaid Houses (Maquettes) (2005–11) during the 2019 Women’s March on Washington Free Community Day; Photo by Kevin Allen

5. Imperialist Edifice

Turquois Blue Colonial House (Barbados) reminds viewers of colonialism’s long-term impact on culture, community members’ self-determination, and commodities. A British colony from 1625 to 1966, Barbados reflects prevailing architectural styles from England. This form resembles the Jacobean St. Nicholas Abbey, built as a sugarcane plantation house in 1658.

—Adrienne L. Gayoso is the senior educator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Impress your friends with five fast facts about artist Camille Claudel (1864–1943), whose work is part of NMWA’s collection.

1. Barring the Opportunity

The talented French sculptor received training at Paris’s progressive Académie Colarossi, in part because the preeminent Ecole des Beaux-Arts barred women from attending until 1897. Other NMWA artists, including Lilla Cabot Perry (1848–1933) and Ellen Day Hale (1855–1940), also attended Académie Colarossi.

2. A Museum of One’s Own

Claudel’s artwork is often regarded in the shadow of the sculpture of Auguste Rodin—the well-known artist with whom she had both a professional and romantic relationship. In 2017, nearly 75 years after her death, the Musée Camille Claudel opened in France, recognizing her important artistic contributions. This treasure trove features approximately half of Claudel’s extant works.

Claudel modeled the hands and feet of the figures in Rodin’s Burghers of Calais (1884–9). One of the twelve casts of this sculpture can be seen at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Check out the expressive extremities of the six men who sacrificed themselves to save their town.

4. It’s Complicated

Claudel isn’t the only artist to have a tumultuous affair with a male peer. Curious about complicated art-world relationships? Read about the blue ride of Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) with Wassily Kandinsky, the on-again off-again matrimonio of Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) and Diego Rivera, and the messy marriage of Lee Krasner (1908–1984) and Jackson Pollock.

5. The Price is Right

During a 2017 auction, 20 works by Claudel—including sculptures made of bronze, terra-cotta, plaster, and clay—sold for a record-shattering $4.1 million, more than three times the high estimate.

—Adrienne L. Gayoso is the senior educator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Impress your friends with five fast facts about artist Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), whose work is on view in NMWA’s collection galleries.

1. Legacy

The second daughter of Joséphine and Louis Bourgeois, Louise was named after her father. Though Bourgeois did have a younger brother, she ensured the family’s legacy by giving her three sons her last name rather than that of her husband, Robert Goldwater.

2. It Figures

Bourgeois initially studied mathematics, and it wasn’t until after her mother’s death in 1932 that she decided to pursue art in earnest.

Although spiders provoke fear for some people, Bourgeois recognized their positive qualities and saw their protectiveness reflected in her mother, who was also a weaver. Bourgeois rendered arachnids throughout her long career, including seven sculptures titled Maman (1999) which stand over 30 feet high. These eight-legged giants grace collections around the world.

Another theme Bourgeois returned to throughout her career was the relationship of a woman to her home. She combined human and architectural forms in the works titled Femme Maison, which translates to “woman house” or “housewife.” These paintings and sculptures appear in her oeuvre from 1945 to 2004.

5. In the Neighborhood

Bourgeois is a subject—as well as an artist—in NMWA’s collection. In SoHo Women Artists (1978), May Stevens represented members of her community based on photographs, including Bourgeois in one of her wearable sculptures.

—Ashley Harris is the associate educator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Hung Liu was born in northeastern China in 1948, two years after the start of the Chinese Communist Revolution. Liu’s father, an officer in the Nationalist army, was arrested when the family crossed into Communist territory looking for food. Liu would not see him again until 1994.

2. Secret Paintings, Secret Freedom

Liu studied painting in the Soviet art tradition of Socialist Realism. Rebelling against the strictness of the style, she began to make small landscape paintings in secret, an act she described as “having a dialogue with the wider world.” Only 30 of her estimated 500 to 600 “secret paintings” have survived.

3. Junkyard Happenings

At the University of California, San Diego, Liu studied under performance artist Allan Kaprow, who once took his students to a junkyard and encouraged them to create with the available materials. Thinking of her strict art education, Liu felt frozen, then realized there were no rules—she could create any art she wished.

Liu’s trademark style of drip-laden, colorful portraits is created by mixing linseed oil with paint. She often incorporates historical photographs, and she has portrayed prostitutes, refugees, street performers, soldiers, laborers, and prisoners in this way. She says the technique is meant to “give the feel of distant memory.”

5. Life as an American

Much of Liu’s newer work explores her identity as an immigrant in America. One large painting represents a “resident alien” identity card on which she has given herself the name “Cookie, Fortune.” Other paintings based on Depression-era photographs by Dorothea Lange capture the universality of struggle and migration.

—Mara Kurlandsky is the digital projects manager at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Bartana is known for her films, installations, and photography. Her complex, multimedia pieces often address and question the ceremonies and rituals that affirm national identity. Her work demands reflection on the ways in which countries develop and sustain dominant narratives.

3. Turning the Tables

Inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, in which a select group of powerful white men assemble to discuss nuclear war and unilaterally determine the fate of the human race, Bartana’s What if Women Ruled the World both proposes and proclaims a peaceful alternative.

4. Women Rule

Approximately 10% of United Nation member countries are led by women. To learn more about trailblazers and current women leaders, check out this Al Jazeera interactive and Pew Research Center 2017 study findings.

5. “Year of the Woman”

The United States House and Senate midterm elections, on November 6, 2018, could bring about a tidal wave of change: 260 women are on the ballot. Inform yourself and vote! Check out this Vice video and the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics “2018 Summary of Women Candidates” report.

—Adrienne L. Gayoso is the senior educator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Impress your friends with five fast facts about artist Robin Kahn (b. 1961, New York City), whose work Victoria’s Secret (1995) is on display in the third-floor galleries.

1. Art at the Start

Raised in New York City, Kahn was exposed to art from a young age. Her father often took her to museums and galleries. Her grandmother was also an artist. Kahn said, “We were kindred spirits, and in that way I had a bit of a role model.”

Kahn expresses herself as a painter, sculptor, curator, author, activist, and blogger. She says, “All of my work deals with women’s issues, empowering women, making their work visible, working with women across boundaries, and barriers, and race, and culture.”

3. Curating for a Cause

Kahn uses her platform to advocate for causes she is passionate about. In 2016 she co-curated an exhibition with her husband titled The Value of Food: Sustaining a Green Planet. The show featured artwork that tackled issues of food sustainability, safety, and accessibility.

4. Copy Rights

Kahn does not believe in copyrighting art. “To claim an artwork as original is a disingenuous idea. Art is about sharing,” she says. “So my books, for example, have no copyright. If you want to take it and copy it, that’s fine with me because it won’t be the same thing. It will become something else.”

5. Refuge in Art

Kahn’s installation at dOCUMENTA (13) re-created the lifestyle of women living in Sahrawi refugee camps. Kahn, and eight women who were born in the camps, created a “home-in-exile” installation “as a symbol of peaceful refuge and see how it can interact with the environment.”

Visit the museum see Kahn’s Victoria’s Secret (1995) in person.

—Madeline Barnes was the spring 2017 digital engagement intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Roberts initially wished to pursue a career in design. She applied to Glasgow School of Art’s MFA course in the Drawing and Painting Department after a one-year postgraduate course in Art and Design at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art and Design.

2. Absent Presence

In the 1990s, Roberts alluded to a human presence in her work without rendering the body specifically. Roberts’s precise portrayal of the garment inFloating Nightgown (1996), together with her handling of line and shadow, evokes the movement and shape of the human form. It was not until later in her career that she began portraying the human body.

3. Drawing Inspiration

Roberts created her earliest sketches of medical objects during visits to the Glasgow Royal infirmary while she was pursuing her MFA. Though Roberts spent time sketching medical objects, she created her final images by working from photographs.

In more recent paintings, Roberts turned her attention to mid-20th-century children. Dormitory (2011) is part of a series that reflects upon the experience of displaced children in Europe. While Roberts conducted extensive research about the post-war period, she also acknowledged that the subject is somewhat autobiographical because she and her siblings spent part of their childhood in foster care and children’s homes.

Impress your friends with five fast facts about artist Tanja Rector (b. 1966), whose work is on view in NMWA’s collection galleries.

1. Road Trip

Tanja Rector, born in Amsterdam, currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Fascinated by the topography of her adopted home, the artist created a series of abstracted landscape paintings that reflect the hills, valleys, highways, and waterways of the western United States.

Eleven mixed-media works in NMWA’s collection by Rector feature reproductions of paintings by 15th and 16th century European artists Giovanni Bellini, Dieric Bouts, Robert Campin, Petrus Christus, and Johannes Vermeer. Rector obscured the works of these male artists through her artistic process of coating them with cloudy layers of wax.

3. Paper Cut

In 2007, Rector created Chair-Table-Wall Composition, a large cascading sculpture made from white paper, cut into organic shapes, and joined by thread and paperclips. When finished, the work measured 168 by 60 by 120 inches. Rector made this work in search for silence through “women’s work” and “slow work.”

Rector founded Spot Orange Design, which creates art for the film and television industry. Her work decorates the sets of movies including White Oleander and The Hangover and the television shows CSI and House.

—Adrienne L. Gayoso is the senior educator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Faith Ringgold considers her “American People” series, begun in the summer of 1963, the start of her mature artistic work. Using a style she called “Super Realism,” Ringgold explored what was happening to black people in the United States and commented upon the Civil Rights movement from a woman’s point of view.

2. Let Me Demonstrate

In 1968, when the Whitney Museum of American Art neglected to include any African American artists in its exhibition of 1930s sculpture, Ringgold helped organize demonstrations. She later co-founded the Ad Hoc Women’s Art Committee, agitating for equal inclusion of women artists in the Whitney Biennial. In 1971 she co-founded the Where We At Black Women Artists collective, a socially conscious group seeking more exhibition opportunities for black women.

3. Tell Me a Story

Ringgold’s famed story quilts were inspired by her fashion-designer mother and Tibetan thangkas (paintings on cloth framed with brocade). She draws on traditions of quilt-making to tell stories about herself and the African American experience more broadly. Her quilts pay tribute to a range of historical time periods and noted cultural figures such as Jacob Lawrence, Josephine Baker, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Ringgold is also an award-winning author. She has written and illustrated numerous children’s books, including Tar Beach (1991) and Harlem Renaissance Party (2015), as well as an autobiography titled We Flew over the Bridge (1995).

5. There’s an App for That

A huge fan of the Japanese number puzzle Sudoku, Ringgold created a visual art variation of the game in the form of an app called Quiltuduko. It uses blocks of color and pattern, inspired partly by her own art. Solve the puzzle and you’ve created not an uninspiring grid of numbers but a work of art! It rolled out on iTunes in 2014, when Ringgold was 84 years old.

Visit NMWA and see Ringgold’s work American Collection #4: Jo Baker’s Bananas (1997) on view in the museum’s third floor galleries.

—Deborah Gaston is the director of education and digital engagement at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Janet Forrester Ngala, like many other Australian Aboriginal artists, depicts Dreamings, or creation stories. As these tales are inherited and considered sacred, artists protect specifics by working in an abstract style.

2. Humble Beginnings

Australian Indigenous art dates back more than 30,000 years. Early forms of expression included rock, bark, and body painting and ephemeral ground drawing. In the 1970s, Aboriginal men started using modern art materials to record ancient stories in tangible, saleable forms. Many women, including Ngala, began painting in the 1980s.

3. In the Stars

Ngala frequently represents the Milky Way in her paintings. Australian Aboriginal people believe that the galaxy is home to ancestral spirits and that each star within it represents a deceased person or animal.

Detail image of the center of Janet Forrester Ngala’s Milky Way Dreaming (1998) in NMWA’s galleries

In addition to the Milky Way, Ngala’s repeating symbols include serpents, honey ants, bush bananas, goannas (carnivorous lizards that are close relatives of Komodo Dragons), and witchetty-mades (large white larvae of moths historically consumed by Indigenous Australians due to their high protein content).

—Adrienne L. Gayoso is the senior educator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.